It’s a Cheating Situation is the 10th studio album by Moe Bandy and his seventh album of new material. Released in 1979, the album reached #19 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart, his best showing in a few years. The album generated two top ten hits and featured the solid country sound that made Moe such a favorite among fans of traditional country music.

The album opened with the title track a fine track featuring Janie Fricke on harmony. Written by Curly Putman and Sonny Throckmorton, the song sailed to #1 on Record World (#2 Billboard, #1 Canadian Country), one of only two solo Bandy singles to reach #1. The song was a bit unusual for Bandy, but effective.

It’s a cheating situation, a stealing invitation
To take what’s not really ours, to make it through the midnight hours
It’s a cheating situation, just a cheap imitation
Doing what we have to do when there’s no love at home

There’s no use in pretending, there’ll be a happy ending
Where our love’s concerned, sweetheart, we both know
We’ll take love where we find it, love and try to hide it
It’s all we got, for we know they’re not gonna let us go

Next up is a more typical Moe Bandy number in “Barstool Mountain”, written by Donn Tankersley and Wayne Carson. The song was the second single released from the album and reached #9. The song had been recorded, as an album track, by Johnny Paycheck a few years earlier on his Take This Job And Shove It album. I like Paycheck but Bandy’s version is far superior

I’ve finally found a place where I can take it
All this loneliness you left behind.
On a mountain that’s no hill for a climber.
Just one step up, sit back and pour the wine.

I climb up on barstool mountain.
High above your world where there’s no pain.
And I’m the king of barstool mountain.
Pretending I don’t love you once again.

“Cheaters Never Win” by Sanger Shafer and Doodle Owens sounds like something Hank Williams might have written, and the comparison is driven home by the arrangement put together for Bandy. Released a decade before, the song would have made a good single for someone.

I don’t know how long you left me here alone
But I sure was a lonesome someone
And I learned from a friend how cheaters never win
Oh, but we sure have more fun.

When empty arms need someone soft to fill them
They’ll start reaching out for almost anyone
My stood to couldn’t stand and cheaters never win
Oh, but we sure have more fun.

“Conscience Where Were You (When I Needed You Last Night)” is a medium slow ballad from the pens of Sanger Shafer and Warren Robb.

I’m not that familiar with songwriter Herb McCollough but his “Try My Love On for Size” is a nice song with steel and fiddle driving the ong along. This song is taken at a moderately up-tempo pace. I really like the song, but I don’t think it would have made for a successful single.

Yeah slip into my arms I think you’ll find a perfect fit
They’ll keep you warm throughout the coldest nights
And these lips will cool the fires that burn you deep inside
My love will hold you close but not too tight.

So try my love on for size
It’ll never shrink or run or fade away
Yes, try my love on for size
Never return it if you’re fully satisfied.

Yes, try my love on for size
Never return it if you’re fully satisfied…

Bobby Barker’s “To Cheat Or Not To Cheat” is a mid-tempo song that asks what I suppose to be the eternal question (my suggestion is ‘Not To Cheat’). It’s an okay song as an album track but nothing more.

While she makes another midnight pot of coffee
We’re mixin’ up just one last glass of gin
And before I even cheat I’m feelin’ guilty
And gin can’t dim these butterflies within.

To cheat or not to cheat, that’s the question
That’s been runnin’ through my mind all evenin’ long
To cheat or not to cheat, what’s the answer
Now I’m pullin’ in my driveway here at home…

Max D. Barnes was a fine songwriter, and “She Stays In The Name of Love” is a good song that I think could have been a good single for someone. Johnny Gimble and Weldon Myrick shine on this track.

I’ve been everything that a man shouldn’t be
I’ve done things a man won’t do
And it’s hard to believe what she sees in me
After all that I put her through.

But I guess that she knows when the bars finally close
She’s the one that I’m thinkin’ of
Well she could leave in the name of a heart full of pain
But she stays in the name of love.

“It Just Helps To Keep The Hurt From Hurtin'” is a fine and wistful Cindy Walker ballad that Moe tackles successfully with just the right amount of trepidation in his voice.

Carl Belew was one of my favorite songwriters, and while his success as a performer was limited, some of his songs became great pop and country classics (“Stop The World and Let Me Off”, “Lonely Street”, “What’s He Doing In My World”, “Am I That Easy To Forget”, “Don’t Squeeze My Sharmon”). “When My Working Girl Comes Home (And Works on Me)” is the sort of album material that Moe excels at singing.

The album closes with “They Haven’t Made The Drink (That Can Get Me Over You)”, another mid-tempo Sanger Shafer – Doodle Owens honky-tonk classic, featuring Johnny Gimble on fiddle and “Pig” Robbins on piano . For the life of me, I do not understand why this track wasn’t released as a single by Moe or perhaps someone else.

The face on my watch stares up through a scratched up crystal
As if to say I’m sorry it’s too early for the booze
Sometimes my mind wonders from the bottle to the pistol
‘Cause they haven’t made the drink that can get me over you.

The bartenders’ local called a special meeting
They came up with a drink called ‘What’s The Use’
I must have drank a dozen before I broke down cryin’
‘Cause they haven’t made the drink that can get me over you.

There are signs on several tracks of the Moe Bandy sound beginning to soften a little. There’s still plenty of ‘Drifting Cowboy’ steel guitar and Texas-style fiddle but on a few tracks the Jordanaires are a little more prominent than I would like, and the title track is far less honky-tonk that Moe’s usual fare.

Moe Bandy released his eighth album, Soft Lights, and Hard Country Music, via Columbia Records in 1978. It was produced, as per usual, by Ray Baker. Both of the album’s singles were excellent honky-tonk numbers. The title track hit #13, while “That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play” stalled at #11.

Divorce plays a central role in the second and third songs on the album. “Darling Won’t You Marry Me Again” has Bandy playing a dad who recently sobered up, and after three years is face-to-face with his kids and the ex who asks him to take her back. The engaging “Paper Chains” is an uptempo number, about a marriage at the point where it falls apart and the couple is on the brink of divorce. “This Haunted House” is a clever take on the well-worn theme of the man dealing with the memory of his ex. Bandy knows his ex is gone and even has a woman to take her place on “If She Keeps Loving Me,” but he’s still in love with her and can’t let her go.

“There’s Nobody Home on the Range Anymore” is a classic western with an impeccable lyric crafted by Ed Penney and Robert Shaw-Parsons. It’s the tale of an old farmhand dreaming of days gone by:

The old man used to dream of the fortune he’d seek

Now he lives in the room where you pay by the week

His hands are all bothered and his pony’s gone lame

And his bones always ache when the sky looks like rain

Well he dreams of the old days with bronc bustin’ tails

And the wide open spaces where buffalo plays

Deep in his mem’ry wild horses ride on

But he knows the good times have all come and gone

There’s nobody home on the range anymore

They closed down the bunkhouse and had locked the door

Now there’s oil wells and motels and folks by the score

But there’s nobody home on the range anymore

Now the eagle stop flyin’ the night wind is still

And the last cayou’s hawlin’ on some lonely hill

The old man is longin’ to lay all down

In his final box canyon the poor side of town

‘Cause he knows his last mantel is two flights two stairs

And his saddle’s turned into an old rocking chair

Mornings he wakes up and wonders what for

‘Cause there’s nobody home on the range anymore

I don’t care much for the arrangement on the song, which hasn’t withstood the test of time. “Are We Making Love or Just Making Friends” finds Bandy portraying a man who cannot get affection from the woman he’s dating. “A Wound Time Can’t Erase” is an excellent weeper, but the heavy production and intrusive background vocalists don’t do the track any justice.

“A Baby and a Sewing Machine” has a gorgeous melody, but the lyric seems backward to me. She dreams of being a mother and a homemaker as though that’s all she can aspire to be in life. I’m thrilled the guy definitely wants more for her, but she seems limited in her perspective.

Soft Lights and Hard Country Music is a very strong album from Bandy. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the album’s tracks. The album isn’t widely available but all the tracks are on YouTube if you search for them.

1977 saw the release of another solidly traditional honky tonk album for Moe. The title track, the album’s sole single, was a faithful Hank Williams cover with a very authentic steel-laced arrangement, which was a top 10 hit for Moe. The song offers sympathy and fellow-feeling to a friend with marital woes.

A notable inclusion is what I believe is the first recorded version of ‘Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind’, later one of George Strait’s biggest hits. It was written by Sanger D Shafer, a regular writer for Moe, and his wife Darlene Shafer. Moe’s version is fine in its own terms – a great traditional honky tonk ballad, and one is left wondering if it might have been a major hit single for him, but Strait fans are likely to prefer that more familiar version.

Sanger Shafer also co-wrote one song with Moe, the closing ‘She’s Everybody’s Woman, I’m Nobody’s Man’, which could easily have been a hit. It is about a former cheater obsessing after the tables have been turned:

As I watch her at the bar with all those men around
I know before closing time one or two won’t be turned down

Once she thought I was the only man
But when I cheated every night
It made her understand
That she don’t have to live a life
Of staying home alone
…

I’m starving for her love
But she’s got more than she can stand
I’m watching my world melt like castles in the sand
She’s everybody’s woman and I’m nobody’s man

‘She’s An Angel’ is on much the same theme, with an added side of self-delusion, written by Harlan Howard and Lola Jean Dillon. Here Moe insists “she’s a good girl, overacting”.

‘A Four Letter Fool’ is another fine song, with some pretty Spanish guitar, and a regretful lyric about a man who has thrown away domestic happiness in favour of “a few forbidden pleasures”.

‘So Much For You, So Much For Me’, an anguished look at the division of spoils following a divorce, is a cover of a Liz Anderson single from the 60s. Bill Anderson and Mary Lou Turner write ‘All The Beer And All My Friends Are Gone’, in which the protagonist finally has to face the cold hard truth about his broken heart. ‘Someone That I Can Forget’ is a sad ballad previously recorded by Jim Ed Brown, loaded with steel guitar.

‘The Lady From The Country Of Eleven Hundred Springs’ is a bouncy up-tempo number about a woman who can outdrink the protagonist and his purse. Moe turns his attention to the rampant hyper-inflation which plagued the 70s in ‘High Inflation Blues’, in a Jimmie Rodgers style country blues, complete with yodel:

It could drive a man to drinkin’
But I can’t afford the booze
I got those heart breakin’, escalatin’, high inflation blues

The cost of livin’ keeps goin’ up
And taxes ain’t goin’ down
I’m just treadin’ water and trying not to drown
Mr Carter I know you’re up there
And I sure could use a hand
So won’t you please have mercy on
The common working man

This is an excellent album. It is not readily available as such, but the tracks can be found on iTunes (in the relatively poorer quality reproduction noted previously).

Moe Bandy released his fifth album, Here I am Drunk Again, on Columbia Nashville in 1976. The album, produced by Ray Baker, had two charting singles, both of which peaked at #11. The title track, a classic country shuffle, peaked first.

Sanger D. Shafer solely wrote the album’s second single, “She Took More Than Her Share,” as well as two other songs on the record. His three solo contributions are brilliant, and range from the delightful Texas fiddle tune “She’s Got That Oklahoma Look” to the excellent (and stone cold) “The Bottle’s Holding Me.” His final contribution, the steel-drenched “What Happened To Our Love” was a co-write with Bandy.

Eddy Raven is responsible for “Please Take Her Home,” a cautionary tale from our protagonist to the lover of the woman he finds too tempting to resist. “The Man You Once Knew,” a tale regarding a guy falling on hard times, was from Dallas Frazier. J.R. Cochran contributed “If I Had Someone To Cheat On,” a reverse barroom anthem where the guy wishes he had someone’s memory to drink away, the excuse to actually be in the joint in the first place.

“Mind Your Own Business” is the Hank Williams classic. The production is a bit slicker than the rest of the album, and slightly cluttered in places, but Bandy executes it was ease. “Then You Can Let Me Go (Out of Your Mind)” is far more sparse, with steel guitar to accentuate the melody.

Here I Am Drunk Again is an incredible album from start to finish, a collection of ten perfectly chosen tunes and not a clunker in the bunch. I have a love/hate relationship with country music from this era, I find a lot of what we’ve spotlighted through the years to be dated and not my kind of country, but this I love. If you missed this album the first time around, or need to revisit it after all these years, I implore you to check it out. You most certainly won’t be disappointed.

In 1976 Moe’s contract was transferred to Columbia, but there were no immediate changes to his mursic, which remained uncompromisingly traditional honky-tonk, with prominent fiddle and steel, softened only by the Jordanaires’ backing vocals.

His first release on the new label, the title track of his new album, was his biggest hit to date, peaking at #2. Written by Paul Craft, the song is a wonderful tribute to the music of the great Hank Williams, with some of Hank’s song titles serving as the soundtrack to the protagonist’s own disastrous love life –

You wrote ‘My Cheating Heart’ about
A gal like my first ex-wife

The second single was less successful, only just creeping into the top 30, but is actually a very good Sanger D Shafer song in which the self-deluding protagonist has been stood up in ‘The Biggest Airport In The World’ (which at the time was Dallas-Fort Worth) by a fiancée he met only a week earlier – in a bar of course.

A couple of other Shafer songs also made the cut. ‘I’m The Honky Tonk On Loser’s Avenue’ anthropomorphises the barroom location of so many country songs and real life heartbreaks. ‘The Lady’s Got Pride’ is a strong song about the cheating protagonist’s unhappy stand-by-her-man wife.

‘You’ve Got A Lovin’ Comin’’, written by Roger Bowling, is a sincerely delivered love song to just such a long suffering wife from a man who has decided to change his ways.

In Bobby Bond’s ‘Hello Mary’ the protagonist calls home from the bar claiming he is engrossed in a ‘business deal’ (while actually gambling with friends). This is exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek song Moe would later do with Joe Stampley, and it is very entertaining.

The up-tempo ‘Ring Around Rosie’s Finger’ was co-written by Connie Smith, and is about a player who has decided to settle down with his true love. ‘The Hard Times’, written by Edward Penney, Tom Benjamin and Hugh Moffatt, is a ballad about a couple dealing with financial difficulties but sustained by their love. ‘I Think I’ve Got A Love On For You’, written by Dallas Frazier and Larry Lee, is a pleasant but filler love song.

‘I’m Not As Strong As I Used To Be’ is about a heartbreak which has got only worse with time, and is another fine song.

Overall, this is a good and solidly country album. It has not been re-released digitally as such, but the tracks are all available on iTunes in rather poor quality.

Moe Bandy’s third (and final) album on GRC was Bandy The Rodeo Clown. Released in 1975, the album was the least successful of Moe’s three GRC albums, reaching only #27 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart, but the title track (and only single from the album) proved to be Moe’s biggest hit to-date, reaching #7 in the USA and #4 in Canada. The album was a hard-core country fan’s fantasy with such stalwart musicians as Charlie McCoy, Bobby Thompson, Bob Moore, Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Leo Jackson, Jimmy Capps, Johnny Gimble, Kenny Malone, Weldon Myrick and Dave Kirby present to ‘keep it country’.

I’m sure that many thought that Moe penned the title track, which was the first track on the album; however, the song actually came for the golden pens of Lefty Frizzell and Whitey Shfer. The story of a rodeo rider toppled by lost love, and winding up a rodeo clown, Moe is entirely believable as he sings the song.

Who was once a bull hooking son of a gun
Now who keeps a pint hid out behind chute number one
Who was riding high till a pretty girl rode him to the ground
Any kid knows where to find me
I’m Bandy The Rodeo Clown

Next up is “Somewhere There’s A Woman”, penned by Rex Gosdin and Les Reed. This song is a standard jog-long ballad that Moe handles well. This is followed by “Give Me Liberty (Or Give Me All Your Love)”, a ballad about a guy who is losing his girlfriend to her old lover.

“Nobody’s Waiting For Me” is a sad slow ballad about a down and outer, what used to be known as a weeper. This song was written by Whitey Shafer – it’s a good song and in the hands of George Jones, it might have been hit single material – but otherwise it is just an album track.

Side one closes with “I Stop And Get Up (To Go Out Of My Mind)”, a mid-tempo ballad with some nice harmonica by Charlie McCoy and fiddle by Johnny Gimble.

Side two opens up with an old warhorse in Don Gibson’s “Oh, Lonesome Me”. I’ve heard better versions, but Moe does an acceptable job with the song. Eddy Raven, who has been enjoying renaissance in bluegrass, penned “I Sure Don’t Need That Memory Tonight”. It’s a decent ballad but nothing more. Better is another Raven tune “Fais Do-Do”, a Cajun-flavored tune that I would liked better had it been taken at a slightly faster tempo. At a faster tempo this song would have made a good single. Yet another Raven song follows in ”Goodbye On Your Mind”, another mid-tempo ballad.

The album closes with “Signs Of A Woman Gone” by Rex Gosdin and Les Reed. The song is slightly up-tempo and while I find the presence of the Jordanaires in the introduction slightly distracting, Bobby Thompson’s fine banjo redeems the song as does Weldon Myrick’s fine steel guitar.

This is a solid country album, well sung by Moe with a solid country band. The problem with the album is two-fold: not enough tempo variation, and generally solid but unexciting songs. I do not mind listening to this album, but only the title track was worthy of single release. The first two GRT albums were better but I would still give this album a solid ‘B’.

After this album, Moe would be signed by Columbia, which purchased Moe’s back GRC catalogue. While Moe would not go on to have enormous success as an album seller, he would crank out a steady stream of successful singles for the next thirteen years.

The second of two albums Moe Bandy released in 1974 was It Was Always So Easy (To Find An Unhappy Woman). It was his second release for GRC and was produced by Ray Baker.

The album saw an uptick in commercial fortunes for Bandy. It was his first to peak inside the top ten, at #9, and give him a major hit at country radio. That hit, the title track, finds Bandy unsuccessfully scouring bars to find a lonesome gal to call his own. It peaked at #7.

The final single, “Don’t Anyone Make Love At Home Anymore,” was one of two compositions by Dallas Frazier. A mid-tempo ballad in which Bandy makes an inquiry regarding the dating habits of married men, it stalled at #13. Frazier’s other contribution, “I’m Gonna Listen To Me” is a wacky moment of self-reflection.

Eddy Raven was another notable name with two songwriting credits. He co-wrote “Somebody That Good,” about a man with keen observation skills, with Baker. “One Thing Leads To Another,” about a loveless relationship, found Raven writing solo.

“How Can I Get You Out of My Heart (When I Can’t Get You off My Mind)” is a bit self-explanatory. “Loving You Was All I Ever Needed” is as it sounds, a ballad about a man who didn’t know what he had until it was gone. The Western Swing influenced “Home Is San Antone,” written by Floyd Jenkins, is delightful, and the only truly uptempo songs on the album.

“I’m Looking For A New Way To Love You,” which Bandy co-wrote with Sanger D. “Whitey” Shafer, centers on a man out of options, trying to impress the woman he loves. Bandy is back in the barroom on “It’s Better Than Going Home Alone” and hating every second he’s there. The lyric, co-written by Truman Stearnes and Guy Coleman, is excellent but it’s Hargus “Pig” Robbins’ gorgeous piano licks that steal the show.

It Was Always So Easy (To Find An Unhappy Woman) was exquisitely produced by Baker, who’s production choices have helped the album age extremely well. The sound is fantastic, but I didn’t feel all the songs were sharply written and some were a bit weaker than I would’ve liked given the breadth of talent that wrote them. But this is still a very solid album I would highly recommend checking out.

Moe’s debut album in 1974, on the GMC label, based in Atlanta, was a moderate success in its time, but a classic today.

The title track, and Moe’s first hit single, peaking at #17, is a classic honky tonk lament, written by legendary writers A L “Doodle” Owens and Sanger D Shafer. The narrator is a country fan whose love for songs about the wild side of life hits a juddering halt when they turn out to be reflections of reality in his own life and his wife turns out to be cheating on him. Drinking his troubles away is no good when the jukebox is loaded with songs which are all too close to home. Loaded with steel guitar and honky tonk piano, it is a great song, with many lyrical nods to other classic songs.

The second single, which reached #24, was the same writers’ ‘Honky Tonk Amnesia’. Another solid honky tonker, with a bit of tongue in cheek in the lyrics, this one has the protagonist the one on the cheating side, fuelled by his heavy drinking:

She’d be hurt if she knew I was drinking
Cause one’s too much and twelve just ain’t enough
She knows how it messes up my thinking
How it makes me look for someone else to love

I get honky tonk amnesia
I forget where all my love belongs
I get honky tonk amnesia
And sometimes it lasts all night long

His poor unsuspecting wife, meanwhile, sits trustingly at home.

Sanger D Shafer composed ‘Cowboys And Playboys’, an amusing song from the point of view of a wealthy northerner who finds a new perspective on life when he moves to Texas and the girls are unimpressed by his Cadillac style. Shafer co-wrote ‘How Long Does It Take (To Be A Stranger)?’ with Dallas Frazier, a short steel laced ballad lamenting a breakup.

Frazier and Doodle Owens wrote ‘This Time I Won’t Cheat On Her Again’, with Moe rebuffing former illicit flame who might be in the market again. Owens teamed up with Dave Burgess for ‘Home Is Where The Hurt Is’, a great steel dominated ballad about a man delaying his return to an empty home:

My glass is empty
And so are my arms
The lights are down low
And so am I

I drink not to think
And I hate to go home
Home’s where the hurt is
My sweet love is gone

Owens also wrote a couple of tunes with Gene Vowell. In ‘How Far Do You Think We Would Go; he dances around the idea of breaking up another couple’s marriage:

Are you sure that loving me would be worth losing him?
Would his memory ever leave us alone?

‘Get All Your Love Together (And Come On Home)’ (co-written by the pair with Glenn Sutton) appeals to his estranged spouse to make a new start. ‘I Wouldn’t Cheat On Her If She Was Mine’ is another fine song, in which Moe wants to offer a new love to a women who has been hurt by the past. It was written by Bucky Jones, Joane Kelle and Paul Huffman.

Some other bar
Another round and I’ll get drunk again
If the party girls sing about what might have been
Do angels miss the ones they love in heaven where you are
And I’m so lonely as I play my sad guitar

And tonight I’ll sing my songs again about you
And try to face another night without you
I’ve tried to find someone and learn to love once more
But then I stopped ’cause you knock at my memory’s door

The album is available on iTunes, and is an essential part of any traditional country fan’s music collection.

Marion “Moe” Bandy was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1944, and moved to San Antonio, Texas, at the age of six. His grandfather had known and worked with country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers on the Mississippi railways, while both Moe’s parents were musical, and his father had a part time country band. As a teenager, Moe’s main interest was rodeo riding, until he was 18 and had endured one broken bone too many, when he turned seriously to music. His brother Mike continued to ride competitively.

He had a day job in a sheet metal factory (working for his dad) while playing small local venues with his band, and getting some work on local TV. However, he did not make a real breakthrough until 1973, when Ray Baker, a music publisher and aspiring record producer, who had been impressed by demo recordings, encouraged him to move to Nashville. Moe’s musical partnership with Baker kickstarted both their careers, as Baker would go on to work with Connie Smith, Merle Haggard and a young George Strait.

Moe issued an independent single, ‘I Just Started Hating Cheating Songs Today’ on the Footprint label, and songs about drinking and cheating became something of a signature theme for him. His contract was then picked up by a slightly larger independent label, GRC, who released three albums and a number of hit singles. Country legend Lefty Frizzell was another to be impressed by the singer, and write a song especially for him (‘Bandy The Rodeo Clown’).

This success gave Moe a springboard to greater things, and he signed to Columbia Records in 1976. He enjoyed a string of hit singles, although perhaps surprisingly only one went all the way to #1. From 1979 he also had a side project as a largely comic duo with labelmate Joe Stampley. He also had individual duet hits with Janie Fricke and the underrated Becky Hobbs.
In the 1980s Moe’s hardcore traditional style relaxed a little. Declining sales saw Columbia drop him in 1985 after nine years on the label, and a shortlived deal with MCA saw him chart again but failed to revive his career significantly. A couple of albums on Curb were the end of his commercial streak, but he was one of the artists to see the appeal of his own permanent show at Branson, Missouri.

In recent years he has been touring with Gene Watson, and he has just released an autobiography, Lucky Me. https://moebandybook.com/
We hope you enjoy our coverage of Moe Bandy’s music this month.